North and South
Page 229Margaret heard enough of this unreasonableness to dishearten her;
and when they came away she found it impossible to cheer her
father.
'It is the town life,' said she. 'Their nerves are quickened by
the haste and bustle and speed of everything around them, to say
nothing of the confinement in these pent-up houses, which of
itself is enough to induce depression and worry of spirits. Now
in the country, people live so much more out of doors, even
children, and even in the winter.'
'But people must live in towns. And in the country some get such
stagnant habits of mind that they are almost fatalists.'
'Yes; I acknowledge that. I suppose each mode of life produces
its own trials and its own temptations. The dweller in towns must
find it as difficult to be patient and calm, as the country-bred
man must find it to be active, and equal to unwonted emergencies.
Both must find it hard to realise a future of any kind; the one
him; the other because his life tempts him to revel in the mere
sense of animal existence, not knowing of, and consequently not
caring for any pungency of pleasure for the attainment of which
he can plan, and deny himself and look forward.' 'And thus both the necessity for engrossment, and the stupid
content in the present, produce the same effects. But this poor
Mrs. Boucher! how little we can do for her.' 'And yet we dare not leave her without our efforts, although they
may seem so useless. Oh papa! it's a hard world to live in!' 'So it is, my child. We feel it so just now, at any rate; but we
have been very happy, even in the midst of our sorrow. What a
pleasure Frederick's visit was!' 'Yes, that it was,' said Margaret; brightly. 'It was such a
charming, snatched, forbidden thing.' But she suddenly stopped
speaking. She had spoiled the remembrance of Frederick's visit to
herself by her own cowardice. Of all faults the one she most
despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart
which leads to untruth. And here had she been guilty of it! Then
came the thought of Mr. Thornton's cognisance of her falsehood.
from any one else. She tried herself in imagination with her Aunt
Shaw and Edith; with her father; with Captain and Mr. Lennox;
with Frederick. The thought of the last knowing what she had
done, even in his own behalf, was the most painful, for the
brother and sister were in the first flush of their mutual regard
and love; but even any fall in Frederick's opinion was as nothing
to the shame, the shrinking shame she felt at the thought of
meeting Mr. Thornton again. And yet she longed to see him, to get
it over; to understand where she stood in his opinion. Her cheeks
burnt as she recollected how proudly she had implied an objection
to trade (in the early days of their acquaintance), because it
too often led to the deceit of passing off inferior for superior
goods, in the one branch; of assuming credit for wealth and
resources not possessed, in the other. She remembered Mr.
Thornton's look of calm disdain, as in few words he gave her to
dishonourable ways of acting were sure to prove injurious in the
long run, and that, testing such actions simply according to the
poor standard of success, there was folly and not wisdom in all
such, and every kind of deceit in trade, as well as in other
things. She remembered--she, then strong in her own untempted
truth--asking him, if he did not think that buying in the
cheapest and selling in the dearest market proved some want of
the transparent justice which is so intimately connected with the
idea of truth: and she had used the word chivalric--and her
father had corrected her with the higher word, Christian; and so
drawn the argument upon himself, while she sate silent by with a
slight feeling of contempt.